Goosfest Art in the Barns Exhibitions
As part of our exciting Art Weekend we have brought together an amazing group of artists from the Northwest and even further afield. Last year’s art exhibition was featured in Cheshire Life magazine and over 600 people visited the exhibition. This year we have expanded the exhibition to two beautiful rural venues just 2 miles apart from each other. This enables us to increase the number of artists exhibiting to 25 allowing a greater range of work. Art again will be available for purchase.
Both Galleries are amazing spaces and are just two miles apart. They are both on the first floor accessed by wide staircases. Parking and toilets are available at both sites.
The Artists participating: Bios and examples of their work
Alan Birch
For the past 9 years, Alan Birch has been working on a series of prints, which take their starting point from the collection of saintly wood carvings in the Welcome Collection at The Science Museum in London. These Later- Day Saints have been shown in The John Rylands Library in Manchester, and are complimented by an illustrated book, Later-Day Saints featuring 20 saints and their life stories, pilgrim badges and postcards. Humour features strongly in his work , delving into the theme of myths and monsters Other works include dry-points and etchings exploring the world of myths and monsters, which employ humour to subvert the mystique of the characters depicted. Alan Birch has shown at the Whitworth, Manchester, and has had major shows at Touchstones, Rochdale, Castlefield Art Gallery, The Grundy, Blackpool, Buxton Art Gallery and other galleries in the North West, London and Holland. He has work in numerous group’s shows nationally and internationally and has work in private collections in the UK, Europe and the U.S, including the Richard Harris art collection. He is a freelance creative practitioner and is the print specialist at the Whitworth in Manchester. He has also worked at Tate Liverpool, numerous museums and schools in the North West. He runs regular workshops at his studio in Rossendale and can be contacted at www.alanbirch.co.uk
Allie Pottinger
Allie graduated as an illustrator, however, over recent years she loves the freedom of working as a watercolour artist based in Cheshire. Creating paintings by season, seascapes, landscapes, florals and wildlife. She is an avid outdoor sketcher and enjoys experimenting.
Exhibitions include Young Illustrator of the Year at Smiths Gallery, Covent Garden, The association of Illustrators Gallery in London, The Arts Centre, Bollington ‘A taste of Cheshire’ solo show, this sell out show was to highlight fabulous local producers, farmers and artisans that are wonderfully committed to producing tasty, seasonal, local food. Allie has more recently exhibited at ‘Summerfields’ in Oxford and at The Royal College of Art in aid of Art for Youth, she also enjoys exhibiting with the ‘Northern Girls’ at Clonterbrook Gallery, Cheshire.
Weblink: www.alliepottinger.com
Allan Offord
Allan Offord gained a first class BA Hons in Fine and Applied Art and originally studied as a teacher of Fine Art in Birmingham University (1969-1970). He continued his own artwork throughout his teaching career. On retiring he further studied at Belfast School of Art where he was awarded a First Class Degree, specialising in painting. Allan’s work has moved steadily from a figurative base towards an increasingly abstract expression of his ideas. Sometimes he will use photographic images as prompts. However much of his work now stems from memories of place, recalled and embroidered on to create paintings suggesting both urban and country landscapes. He finds allowing a painting to almost develop from within itself now leads to the most imaginative and exciting expression of his self as an artist.
Amanda Wigglesworth
Amanda Wigglesworth is a painter living and working in South Manchester, England. Her abstract expressive style is free-spirited and left to chance, it has no pre-determined outcome. She studied Fine Art combined with Art History at Manchester University, where she developed her distinctive mark making, using oil paints and resins to create highly textured layers and develop her expressionist techniques. Amanda has won two art prizes, in 2003, she won a prize at the Birmingham Royal and in 2015 she won Best Northern Artist at the The National Open Art Competition, ( NOA). Amanda Wigglesworth’s paintings have been collected in America, South Africa and Western Europe. She had exhibited in London, Manchester, Zurich and Miami. Amanda has had two solo exhibitions in Manchester and has corporate collections at Dell Headquarters UK and also Govnet Communications, London. She is a member of the Society of Scottish Artists.
Bill Ollier
After many years in academia Bill has now taken the opportunity to follow his life-long passion for creating 3 dimensional art. He now spends time in his studio within the Electric Picture House Art Collective in Congleton where he focuses on Sculpture. Working with a range of materials, including cast bronze and aluminium, plaster, wood and stone, he explores ways of representing both human form and nature in resistant materials. The complexity of the process which underlies the ability to create simplicity of form is a major interest.
Caroline Ritson
Caroline Ritson is a well-respected artist who has exhibited internationally and her work is in many private collections. She is a member of the Oxford Art Society. She works in Acrylic and inks, layering and texturing her work. Paintings showing the power of waves using colour and exciting texture and mark making to express different moods in her seascapes, many inspired by the wild coastlines of West Cork and Cornwall. Reflections in calmer waters echo the beauty of a place captured in its reflections. Caroline finds the beauty in overlooked objects and paints them, bringing to the viewer a fresh look at the beauty in an old door or rusting metal.
Caroline won the Posytude Gallery prize in 2016 and her Greenman picture won the “Big Oxfordshire Artweeks” competition. Her work is featured in The Oxford Art Book and she was chosen to be a wild card on Landscape artist of the Year 2022.
Instagram: @ritsoncaroline
Ghislaine Howard
Ghislaine Howard is internationally recognised as a painter of powerful and expressive means. Her work charts and interprets shared human experience. Named as a ‘Woman of the Year’ in 2008 for her contribution to art and society, she has exhibited in many prestigious venues including Manchester Art Gallery, The Whitworth, Canterbury Cathedral and the British Museum. A monograph relating to her life and work, ‘The Human Touch’ written by her husband, the art historian Michael Howard was published in 2017. The Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce have made their HQ on Deansgate, the home of the ‘Ghislaine Howard Collection’.
Debbie Goldsmith
Debbie Goldsmith is a British artist born in 1969, she studied at Coventry Polytechnic, where she honed her skills in painting and drawing. She currently has a studio based in Cheshire, where she creates her artwork. Goldsmith’s starting point is the landscape and in particular that of Cheshire where she currently lives and works. She uses the local countryside to make field notes and drawings whilst out walking, her quick sketches note the change in season and weather. Back in the studio she uses the sketches as a starting point and employs experimental processes in drawing and printmaking to generate a unique vocabulary of mark-making and exploring various compositions which she then works up into larger scale-paintings. Goldsmith’s artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums both throughout the UK and internationally, and she has received critical acclaim for her unique and innovative approach to abstract painting. Goldsmith’s work features in both public and private collections.
Clinton Cahill
Clinton Cahill graduated in Fine Art from Manchester Polytechnic in 1979. He has taught art and design subjects in further and higher education. Until 2019 he led the MA courses in Illustration, Graphic design and Art Direction at Manchester Metropolitan University. Alongside teaching he has maintained his own creative practice, much of which pursues interactions between literature, landscape and imagination. He has presented, published and exhibited work nationally and internationally, including China, Mexico, the USA, Australia and Ireland. He holds a PhD for his work in visualising James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
Helen Felcey
I’m a ceramics-based artist, educator, and curator. Artistically, craft resonates deeply with my practice, recognising the connection between material presence and reflection that this can bring. Since 2017, I have taught within the School of Creative and Performing Arts at Liverpool Hope University where I tutor in ceramics and contemporary fashion design. Combined with my work in education, I’ve worked on a wide variety of artistic projects, shaped by the enjoyment of collaborations and a wish to be part of holistic research and practice. This includes ongoing work with the British Ceramics Biennial, Gomde UK Tibetan Buddhist Centre and Artists’ Benevolent Fund.
John Hewitt
John Hewitt trained as a fine artist and printmaker and has completed a PhD on memory and drawing. Since 2015 he has made daily observational drawings in pocket sketchbooks, across a range of subjects. Selected images are recrafted into digital prints. His artworks have been widely exhibited and collections include the V&A, the Museum of London and the Government Art Collection. John was awarded the Hugh Casson Prize for Drawing at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2016, is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and is an elected member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts.
Jon Barraclough
Jon Barraclough is a maker of drawings, photographer, film-maker, teacher and researcher. Born in Bradford, Yorkshire UK, currently resident in Liverpool. He works primarily in drawing and drawing devices, photography, performance, film and sound. He is former Director of The Liverpool School of Art (Liverpool John Moores University) and a founder and co-publisher of DRAWING PAPER UK.
Liz Ackerley
As I paint, I am interested in exploring the unique energy and signature of a place. I am drawn to transitions and contrasts in the landscape. My paintings reflect my feelings of places rather than single views. The start point for my work is always on location using expressive drawing and painting. In the studio, I translate these experiences into multi-layered dynamic abstract paintings. Collage, paint and other media are combined to create rich textural works with a sense of the place. Liz works from her Manchester studio and graduated with a post-graduate diploma in Landscape design. She established her art practice over the last decade and has exhibited at Open studios and Gallery opens with a major joint exhibition in 2022. Her work is in national and international collections. This year she was elected into the Manchester Academy of Fine Art.
Maddy Venus
Maddy Venus is a multi-disciplinary artist based at Rogue Studios, Manchester, whose practice exists in a constant state of construction and deconstruction. Her monochromatic observational drawings of temporary found-object installations are informed by phenomenological experience. Venus’s self-referential practice sees stylistically familiar forms and lines echoed across textiles, print-making and sculpture. Maddy Venus completed a BA (hons) Fine Art degree at Newcastle University in 2015 and an MA in Textiles at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2020.
Marie Jones
Marie Jones is an artist (b.1983) currently based in Warrington UK. Jones has an ideas led practice and is interested in: the snippets of everyday conversations that linger and our interpretations of them. Our relationships with one another and how transcribing may enable empathy and our ability to look beyond the limitations, expectations and probable outcomes to create new systems with their own eventual limitations, expectations and probable outcomes.
Using a combination of scale, colour, humour, and domestic craft techniques Jones creates works such as large scale site responsive installations, wall hangings, soft sculptures, art garments & performance. In 2017, Jones also launched Ride Your Pony, an international group exhibition and residency which she organises and curates.
Mike Waldron
Mike Waldron is an expressionist painter exploring the relationships between people and landscape. He is drawn to narratives which run back into the history of his home city of Manchester and the wild landscapes of his residence in the Peak District and family heritage on the west coast of Ireland. Mike is driven to explore the psychological impact of the changing built environment and our relationship to it. Mike is first and foremost a colourist working with both figurative and abstract approaches and in the liminal spaces between. He believes that all painting is about technique and cherishes the opportunity to show the processes and materials underpinning his practice on the canvas.
Rachel Addis
Rachael is a contemporary painter based at Rogue Artists’ studios in Manchester. Her practice is fundamentally a mark making process in which she creates abstract landscapes by applying a multitude of painted layers and patterns to the surface of canvas and paper. Her formative years, spent between the Lake District and Asia had an important inspiration on the process, colours and aesthetic of her work. Throughout this time, Zen Buddhism imprinted itself as an influence on her distinctive mark making process. Also heavily influenced by 1950’s abstract expressionism painters, the philosophies from these cultures and movements began to mould and shape her style and attitude to the painted surface. Rachael’s current paintings seek to establish a contemplative and meditative aspect both for the viewer and for herself. She uses unconventional processes to create her paintings, abandoning paintbrushes for found and recycled materials such as discarded fragments of toys.
Following her degree in Fine art, Rachael completed the three year postgraduate programme at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. As well as exhibiting UK wide, selling her paintings nationally and internationally, her work has been accepted into several exhibitions. This includes the Jackson’s Open Painting Prize 2021, Ing Discerning Eye, Visual art Open and the Art Gemini Prize 2021 in which she won the People’s choice award. Rachael was a featured artist in the BBC documentary about the Royal Academy summer exhibition 2020. Rachael is delighted to have recently won the accolade of “Manc of the Year” with the Manchester based arts organisation Cotton on Manchester.
Rochelle Ikin
Rochelle is a conceptual artist combining figurative painting with experimental textiles. Her main body of work considers division, isolation and inherited belief systems. The stitches in her paintings are fractures based upon doorways and interiors. She is interested in how a door can be both a barrier and a passageway: a means of entry, constraint and escape. For Rochelle, painting is a form of expression and a means of sharing in communion with others. She appreciates how the visual arts transcend linguistic barriers and how they can provide a means to express what cannot be explained with words. Words do yet remain important to the artist; the titles of each artwork display a love of symbolism and poetry.
Rory Cahill
Rory Cahill is an Artist and Creative Director. His personal practice explores humanity’s dual existence – how we live in both physical and digital realities. He employs CGI, along with procedural technologies, coding and game design tools to examine this duality and the crossovers / liminal spaces that arise. His video piece PLAZA was exhibited as part of The London Open 2022 at The Whitechapel Gallery, and he has contributed to shows at The V&A and The Royal Academy. He also created a series exploring the themes of Touch and Materiality for Vogue Singapore.
Sarah Carlisle
Sez Carlisle studied a BA in Fine Art in Belfast. Her minimalist geometric works a distillation of the deigned environment with a hint of architectural influence. The painted planes suggesting dimentionality in a serene space, the forms sometimes disrupt the atmosphere implying an intrusive presence. in contrast, her cut-outs filling space with geometric forms, balancing colours and textures to create a modernist landscape. Sez lives in Brighton & cycles along the seafront west to her Hove studio, the journey taking in expansive coastal skies and allows a dip in the sea after a day of painting.
Steve Sutton
Trafford based artist, graduate of Winchester School of Art and former Art Teacher. My work focuses on the relationship between humans and the natural environment with emphasis on climate crises. Themes of pressure, tension, and balance are constantly explored.
My practice ranges from exhibiting site specifically in a natural location to indoor studio and exhibition contexts with a major emphasis on low carbon art making. I use many sustainably sourced materials creating sculptures and 3D installations accompanied by an extensive range of related drawings.
Sue Dunbar
Sue studied ceramics at degree level but for a number of years my work has involved using mixed media textile techniques. I have taught in further and higher education for over 30 years mainly at pre-degree level and have run part-time courses for International students preparing them for entry onto degree courses in art and design.
I have continued to work in various textile media and been involved with group exhibitions as a member of Cheshire Textiles as well as showing and selling work in local and international galleries.
Sue Roberts
A lifelong creative, Sue has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. After a long ‘hiatus’ Sue returned to painting in 2018. Working in a variety of media, Sue creates expressive, intuitive paintings responding to internal or visual stimuli. The process leads her to the completed painting.
Tim Dunbar
I retired from full time teaching in 2009 and since then I have maintained an expansive arts practice that has involved a number of local and national exhibitions/projects. My work has always been primarily painting based but over the last twenty years there has been a progressive shift away from the ‘production’ of paintings to a more critical practice that involves the development of what I refer to as “studies collectives” which have been created from combinations of painting, drawing and written texts. Interest is shifted from the singularity of individual art works towards a sense of relationship or connection between elements that make up the collective.
Carriage Return: Hilary Judd and Lucy May Schofield
[Carriage return] is a UK based artists duo composed of Hilary Judd and Lucy May Schofield. We have worked together since 2018. We work exclusively with typewriters. Out of this simple, but now practically obsolete tool, we create drawings, book-works, installations and performances.
[ Carriage Return ] celebrates the limitations of the typewriter’s mechanisms. At the time of its invention, it was a time saving print technology, yet today its slowness only serves to highlight the lightning speed and constant motion of our online, always connected existence. Our typewriters are physical, heavy, restrictive, however the miss-hits, mistakes, failures and vulnerabilities of this medium spark new creative possibilities between us.
While print technology can now make possible all that we desire, the attraction of exploring a tool used primarily for letter writing in a world where people no longer write letters, allows a freedom and abstraction of the drawn line. These rudimentary drawings encourage an honesty in the ongoing conversation created between two worlds and two experiences.
[ Carriage Return ] has its roots in contemporary printmaking. The work that we have made to date, which began as a means of connection and a meditation into the nature of time, has unveiled new and exciting opportunities to extend the traditional remit of artistic practice. The work to date has been developed through various exhibitions, conferences, print fairs, and residencies presenting our work to art and non-art audiences alike.
